Jamestown before the English
Let’s now turn to the native peoples of the Atlantic coastal region in our histories of pre-contact Americans. In the lush woodlands that blanketed the eastern part of the continent, hundreds of tribes and thousands of communities lived and used this rich region. We will look at the Algonquin who lived in the southern coastal plains of Virginia, on the land that will eventually host the first permanent English colony at Jamestown.
Several distinctive Native American
groups populated the eastern woodlands of North America. Human bones found at Cactus
Hill, Virginia prove that people roamed this region at least 16,000 years ago. Before
contact with Europeans in the 16th century, the Algonquin comprised the
largest group, living in an area that extended from Hudson Bay to the Atlantic. Because of the temperate climate and abundance of rainfall, this region
produced more food than any other part of the continent. Other tribes contested
this fertile land, especially the Sioux and the Iroquois. Ownership of contested
places and coveted resources often resolved itself through battles which changed
homelands and forced migration to other parts of the continent. For example,
originally the Algonquin lived around the Great Lakes region but due to conflict
or drought or something else, they moved to the Atlantic coast, first about
2,000 years ago with another wave around 1,200 year ago[1]
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| Map of the Algonquin World (from exhibit at Historic Jamestowne NHP) |
The Algonquin
Like many other
pre-contact tribes, the Algonquin changed from hunters and gatherers to farmers
sometime around 2,000 years ago. And as with the other tribes, corn proved the
key. With the improved diet from corn and the resultant population growth, the
Algonquin developed increasingly complex societies which required more social
organization and cooperation. Chiefs controlled commerce and collected tributes
of crops and other goods.
Their social structure placed the
chief and sub chiefs (werowances) at
the top followed by warriors, priests, and commoners. Under a supreme chief who
ruled over multiple villages and communities, a “paramount” or confederacy
evolved where the werowances received
tributes from their subjects and then gave tribute to the supreme chief. As
Stephen Potter observes in Commoners,
Tribute, and Chiefs: “The rank of
chief gave them the authority to direct labor and gather economic surpluses,
resulting in two economies—the political economy of the chiefdom and the
subsistence economy of the supporters’ households.”[2]
When chiefs died, their wealth followed their corpses into the mortuary mound,
perhaps a remnant of the earlier Moundbuilders who shared the Algonquin
language.
In addition to the chiefs
controlling natural resources such as crops, game, and the bounty of nature,
they also managed the trade networks that ran through their lands.
Archeologists have discovered rhyolite tools on the south coast of Virginia
made from stone quarried near Gettysburg, Maryland. Skilled stone-workers dug
out the rhyolite and then chipped it into blanks. Traders carried the blanks south in backpacks
woven from reeds or made from skins. In the paramount of the Potomac Valley, flint
knappers shaped the blanks into projectile points, spears, scrappers, and other
tools necessary in a non-metal world.
Imagine a small group of traders walking
hundreds miles with backpacks full of goods. Maybe they traded corn or dried
fish for the rhyolite. Perhaps they mined it themselves before heading back. As
with the Moundbuilders and the Chacoans, the Algonquin traveled over a wide
network of trails and terrain to trade with others near and far.
Supporting their world view, the
Algonquin developed a complex religion. Gods and spirits divided into two major
groups: Ahone was the creator and
giver of good things and their main deity. Ahone
did not seek offerings or sacrifices. Okee
was often associated with war and strife and unlike Ahone, offerings such as tobacco, beads, fur, or food could appease
this sometimes vengeful god. To facilitate exchanges with the gods and spirits,
two hierarchies of priests presided over the faithful. The higher priests
insured the proper performance of rituals and held the tribal memories and
history. The lower caste of priests administered to more local concerns such as
curing the sick with herbs, chants, and sweat lodges and defending their
communities.
Tobacco held an important role in
religious observances. To appeal to Okee
and other spirits, tobacco was thrown into a fire. Prayers attached to exhaled
smoke hopefully were carried to sympathetic spirits. Clay pipes found at
excavations have small bowls, perhaps because the native tobacco in the
Virginias was a harshly strong herb.
The Powhatans
Let’s focus on a specific Algonquin
tribe. One of the prominent Algonquin sub-groups before contact with Europeans was
the Powhatans, who lived along the tidewater in southern Virginia. The
Powhatans called their land Tsenacomoco.
The paramount chief of the Powhatans, the Mamanatowick,
ruled his people through marriage alliances, diplomacy, and force. At the
beginning of the 17th century, his chiefdom included thirty tribes
and approximately 15,000 people.
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| Algonquin Mother and Child |
Most marriages occurred at puberty,
and the groom paid a bride price to her family to make up for the loss of her
labor. Men could marry as many women as they could support. Both men and women
adorned their faces with red or blue paint and nut oil, and women tattooed
themselves.
The Powhatans
had a semi-nomadic cycle of moving around an area to take advantage of the
resources, dictated by the seasons. During the winter months, called Popanow, they hunkered down to survive
the lean times. Once Cattapuak, or
Spring, arrived, they left their winter villages and fished, hunted, gathered
early plants, and planted corn, squash, beans, and other crops. The March
through May oyster hunts often provided fresh nutrition for hungry people and dried
meat for later eating. Cohattayough, or
Summer, saw the Powhatans living in portable wigwams and fishing for sturgeon,
salmon, alewife, cod, smelt, trout, striped bass. They even hunted whales,
porpoises, and seals from their log and birch bark canoes. They stockpiled food
for the winter. Fall, or Nepinough, called
for reaping the corn, squash, and beans while late Fall, or Taquitock, witnessed communal gatherings
with up to 200 tribal members hunting and processing the deer kills. They also
hunted beaver, moose, caribou, geese, ducks, and other animals. Women and children collected scallops,
mussels, crabs, and other shell fish as well as nuts and berries.
The Powhatans
on the eastern seaboard mainly grew the Three Sisters of corn, squash, and
beans, but also cultivated potatoes, peppers, and tobacco. They planted the
Three Sisters together in their fields with the corn providing stalks for the climbing
bean vines and the squash growing underneath this green canopy.
When winter
arrived, the Algonquin gathered together in large camps and built bark or mat
covered long houses that held four or five families. The months of February and
March often tested them as food and fuel might dwindle. Cached food in
semi-subterranean structures provided sustenance and hopefully prevented
starvation. At a site near the Patuxent River in Virginia, archeologists excavated
a large storage pit and found oyster shells, broken pottery, and stone tools.
Another storage pit on the James River revealed the remains of fresh water
mussels, whitetail deer, turkeys, turtles, sturgeons, and gars. Other items in
these pits include angled clay pipes with incised designs, shell gorgets with
drilled dot designs, and small shell masks of stylized human faces often with a
thunderbolt or tear descending from the eye.
These excavations give us insight into what the Algonquin ate and how
they lived.
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| Wigwam made out of animal hides (Photo by J. Hunner) |
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| Inside of a Wigwam at Jamestown Settlement (Photo by J. Hunner) |
The Paramount of the Powhatans which covered the fertile coastal plains of Virginia was a large confederacy of Algonquin, regulated by their seasonal activities and also by their priests and their chiefs. At the turn of the 17th century, this was a powerful paramount, a healthy collection of people based in agriculture but also connected to other parts of the East Coast through trade and diplomacy. The Mamanatowick, the supreme chief of the Powhatans in the coastal area of Virginia, had a daughter named Amonute, whose life changed history. In a future chapter on the English colony at Jamestown, we will look at her more closely. Because of her lively nature like turning cartwheels, people nicknamed her “the playful one,” or Pocahontas.
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| An Algonquin Village |
Today, many
people identify with the various Algonquin peoples. Some of the many tribes
that have Algonquin roots are the Cheyenne, Cree, Creeks, Delaware, Fox, Kickapoo,
Mahican, Menominee, Mohegan, Ojibwa, Pequot, Pottawotomi, Powhatan, Sac, and Shawnee.
Eight tribes are recognized by the state of Virginia as having ancestral ties
to the Powhatan confederation: the Upper Mattaponi; the Chickahominy; the
Eastern Chickahominy; the Nansemond; the Rappahanock; and the Monacan Nation.
The Pamunkey and Mattaponi are the only two peoples in Virginia who have
retained at least some of their ancestral lands on reservations. At the end of
the future chapter on the English colony at Jamestown, we will learn more about
the creation of this historical park.
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| Swamp on Jamestown Island (Photo by J. Hunner) |
Colonial National Historical Park
P.O. Box 210
Yorktown, VA 23690
757-856-1200
Related Sites:
Jamestown Settlement: http://www.historyisfun.org/jamestown-settlement.htm.
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